Did evolution screw us?

(This is really more of a blog, but I am posting it here so the replies can be easier to follow, for those interested.)

We all know that the human body isn't perfect.

It is clear that we are still in development from natural selection instead of being the finished product of intentional design.

When we look at the negative impact humanity orchestrates, I can't help but think that maybe homo sapiens are going to be yet another pruned branch; a dead end. Really, there are only two ways for us to go.

In a few billion more years, we will have either developed into something unrecognizable (unlikely, given our urges for self destruction.) Or we are going to have wiped out our own species, and probable quite a few more that were unfortunate enough to share a planet with us. Sad? Yes. Catastrophic? No.

Let's face it. We have scientific evidence that the planet has been rebooting itself systematically long before we started to slime across its surface. How many dinosaurs are roaming over the great plains? How many extinctions on the small scale as well as the planetary took place long before we mastered fire?

It would take the total destruction of every single bug, bacteria, virus and well....EVERYTHING..and then, still...

The cosmos will still continue to spin, which means that whatever environment created the potential for universal life will still exist, and eventually start all over again. Existence as we know it is such a temporary thing. Survival of any species, let alone ours depends on the rules of simplicity.

Humanity is anything but simple.

The only thing that gives us an 'edge' in the over all predator/prey struggle is our ability to think and reason.

It seems that our logical mind is always at war with our base urges. We know we need to consume less, conserve more and reverse our environmentally destructive path to survive in this little window of reality.

But we don't.

And we won't.

Why?

There is no deity to blame for this failed blueprint. We don't have any omnipotent 'plan' for our future.

It is in our very genes to act out this play....but why?

At what point did we evolve into what we are now?

What was the turning point in our development that wrote the screen play for this monumental fuck up that we have since become?

I would say that it comes down to procreation.

When we gradually developed pleasurable sex, our species as we know it ended.

We started down the irreversible path of destroying ourselves and everything around us.

Take a look at other animals. How many of them actually enjoy the act of intercourse? How many gain physical pleasure from it?

This is my theory. Feel free to pick it apart at will.

<b>When the mating urge becomes linked to pleasure instead of reproduction, a hedonistic species arises. </b>

In some species, this is nothing more than the promise of reproduction and continuation of the line..

In ours, it has lead to over population and the lack of the ability to weigh costs and benefits in the long term.

Immediate pleasure supersedes future security.

Wait. No. Not just security, but future SURVIVAL.

We have adapted to go for immediate pleasure without weighing the future cost.

Procreation was the start.

We had sex because it felt good to rub our wet bits together, not because we wanted to risk agony and possible death for the continuation of our species.

We had sex because it felt good, despite the fact that the tribe couldn't really handle another member.

I feel more like a god rather than a freak accident of the universe or the net product of animal grunts.

And what is amazing, the fish vertebrate that gave rise to all land animals, is not only, not a dead fossil in a rock but has been on earth for 300 millions years completely unchanged. Though evolution within a phylum is a scientific fact, this trans-phylum stuff is waiting for evidence. I'm going to continue bop around like a god put here, until the evidence shows otherwise.

Coelacanth was assumed to be a transitional form, representing the transition from water to land. The discovery of living samples of the fish alleged to be 300 million years old, actually shocked the evolutionist.

To answer the title of your post alone.... "Did Evolution Screw Us?".. Not intentionally!

To answer the rest... Female Bonobo Chimps have learned to use sex as a tool to control the males.... to keep the peace...to get what they want etc.. In short, they have learned to harness the power of those urges in the males towards survival ends. So all is not lost. There is hope.

I think, as an existentialist transman that this quote is pretty much the story of my life right now. I can't blame some higher power for putting me into the wrong body. I can only be judged through my action to revise the house made from the blueprint, tear down the old walls and build new ones, paint the outside blue instead of pink, and change the initials on the mailbox from ASG to STG. Blame gets me nowhere; I can cry about my reality all I want but the only way my life will get better is if I stand up and do something for myself.

So I'm not sure that I agree with all you're saying here but taken out of context this line really hits me as positive.